


Six Pointed Crest

by orphan_account



Series: From Russia, With Love [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Antisemitism, Being jewish in soviet russia is a thing, F/M, Jewish Character, Memory piece, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 19:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10287362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Part of the "From Russia with Love" series. This piece is a more intimate look at earlier days of Yakov and Lilia's relationship, with attention paid to both religion and their unborn child.





	

When she tells her parents, they disown her.

                 

“A Jew?” They hiss.  They remember the war.  Lilia closes her jacket around her waist tighter, unsure if she is attempting to accentuate the place where her unborn child grows or to hide it. “And here you are carrying his Jew spawn.”

                 

“Don’t call him that. He has a name.”

 

They don’t say his name.  They stop saying hers.

 

She does not tell them that at least they’re giving the child up for adoption.  Besides, that plan changes anyway.

 

_She remembers the night they decided to keep the child themselves when they started to discuss names for children.  He suggests ones from his culture, names like his own, and she likes that._

_“Rivka.” She muses, shuffling through her memory of names simultaneously Hebrew and Russian._

_“Yitschak.” He suggests.  They go back and forth, side by side in his bed and they laugh at the almost nonsensical nature of it all.  Here they were._

 

When they tell his parents, they speak to the young couple in Yiddish.  They scowl and hesitate at first but they hug her.  She is taller than them both.  His mother has bright red hair and she wonders if their child will be the same. She squeezes his hand and smiles at him.

 

He’s enamored with the child, with the idea of their child and He lies as close as he can to Lilia so he can keep his hand to the swell beneath her nightgown.

 

“Do you think he can hear me?”

 

“That’s what they say.” She laughs and his eyes light up.  He looks boyish, delighted when their eyes meet.  His brown hair is wavy and tumbles around his face and past his cheeks like a tawny halo, falling into his eyes.  She leans forward and combs it back, pressing her nose to his then poking him with lighthearted mischief.  He rolls his eyes but kisses her and she leans into the embrace, thinking that his lips taste like onions from dinner but she finds that she likes it.  He pulls back and places his hand to her abdomen again and though he does not say as much out loud, Lilia can tell that he’s envisioning the future.

 

“Do you mind?” He asks next. “That the child will be a Jew? Do you want him to be a Jew? Often we credit only the mot—”           She cuts him off with another kiss and only when she pulls back does she see that his eyes swim only with concern and perhaps some fear.

 

“How could I possibly ever mind? I would be honored.”

 

Lilia does not know but he pictures a boy in a kippah holding his hand as they walk through the streets, a boy so devout and dedicated as he did not doubt his parents wished him to be and he smiles.

 

“Thank you.” He does not disclose the image but Lilia smiles and rolls closer to him in their shared bed, nudging his ankle with her foot.  It’s warm in the apartment.  Rather, it’s warm in the bed as they wrap themselves around each other as closely as they can, seeking out the best possible fit.  They say nothing more but both of them dream of happiness.

 

 

 

 

***

The company calls her to tell her to come pick up the rest of her belongings.  Because they waited several months to call her and instructed her to come in the middle of rehearsal, Lilia thinks it is so everyone can gawk.

 

“Do you want me to come with you?”  She shakes her head but falls into his arms for a moment, breathing in the scent that clung to his coat and sweater and then she walks alone to the ballet.  She feels the eyes of the dancers stopping mid-movement and turning to face her.  The new prima follows her to the dressing room where Lilia’s belongings are folded far too neatly.

                 

“I’m sorry,” the new prima says with a smirk and Lilia turns, standing tall as ever.  She only narrows her eyes, trying with all her might to make the other dancer squirm.  She does and Lilia thinks to herself with relief and pride that she is not prima material.  The other dancer, not much younger than Lilia, herself, crouches back and narrows her eyes, as if testing Lilia with all of her might.  But Lilia just stands taller and adjusts the collar of her jacket.

                 

“Whatever for?” Lilia arches her brows but this time the girl does not sneer.

                 

“For what happened.” The prima gestures at Lilia’s abdomen and Lilia grimaces.  She feels the baby shift and she laughs quietly, thinking to herself that he has good judgment in terrible people already.

                 

“Nothing to be sorry for at all.” Lilia places her hand on the spot where she felt the baby move and she coaxes her expression into a smile.  She does not want to admit she feels the tears beginning to well in her eyes.

 

“It’s a look that becomes you.” The dancer says, making herself even taller, “How much older is the father than you, the costume mender? Ten years?”

                 

“Yes, Helene.  And he’s working as a coach now. He’s perfectly  good at what he does.”

The dancer’s words sting her though.  She feels a disconnect from the child as the word “becomes” seeps into her skin and impending maternity rushes through her veins, so fast that she cannot stop it.  Lilia thinks to herself that she was meant to be the prima standing there and the baby stops shifting in the womb.  She thinks they hold their breath at the same time.

                 

“Maybe we’ll see you in the audience then?” Helene, walks away and Lilia stops holding her breath, gasping but not yet crying.

                 

She feels the baby shift again when she drags herself into the apartment and the first thing Yakov notices is that her hair has come undone.  She collapses onto the couch and he sits beside her and they are eye-to-eye.  Lilia says nothing but stares at him and she thinks he’s handsome, with his determined eyes and his dark, disheveled hair, parted unevenly.  She laughs a bit and readjusts his hair with her long fingers.

                 

“You’ve been thinking again, haven’t you? You’re going to go bald if you keep messing with your hair.”

                 

Her eyes are greener when they are glassed over but she closes them and kisses him and he runs his own fingers through her hair.

                 

“We should probably get married.” She pulls away when he speaks and her hair falls around her shoulder.

                 

“Wha-?”

                 

“Married. Before the baby is born.”

  

“Is this your way of proposing to me?” She crouches back some more, placing her hand on her stomach to balance herself out and he nods, always so earnest and he reaches forward. Lilia feels the baby shift again when Yakov touches the fabric of her dress and she kisses him again.

 

***                         

When they get married, his parents attend and so do some of his students.  Only three dancers from the company arrive and Lilia is relieved to see that the new prima is not one of them.

                 

“We’ll have a proper wedding some time later,” is the sentiment implicit in their vows and they walk out into the snowy streets arm in arm and they laugh.

                 

Her sister finds her to tell her they can no longer speak now that she bears not only the Jew’s child, but his name as well.  Lilia does not mind this time.  They had mostly lost touch anyway and she suspects her parents sent her sister as a spy to see how she fared, an excuse for gossip.  Lilia likes that she bears her husband’s name, a Jewish name, yes, but one that belongs to her husband and now her and their child. A common thread.

     

She lies beside him that night and while she does not think the future is ever totally bright, she sees it as a warm glow.  Neither of them are asleep yet but they’re as entwined as they can be, separated by where their unborn child slumbers.

           

And the next day she forgets about her parents and sister for a little bit because the first thing she sees is her husband, yes her husband, what a marvelous thought to have, still asleep with his features smoothed out and his arm draped lazily across his face.  She nudges him with her foot, waiting for him to awaken.  He shifts and opens one eye.

 

“We’re married.” She laughs and finds his hand. “It’s just now occurring to me.”

She kisses him and finds they are happy.  Ice crystallizes on the window and they don’t leave the bed that day.  A one-day honeymoon, entangled in their sheets and laughing.  She likes how his arms feel around her and the baby kicks as she leans against him.

***

                 

She laughs when they hand her to him through all her tears and so they name him Yitschak. And in the Torah, Yitschak begot Yakov and the irony is palpable.

                 

“We are not bound by our namesakes.” She laughs but now that her last name is his own, they treat her differently.

                 

An old man asks for the child’s name when they wait in front of the hospital to go home. When she tells him, his pleasant expression morphs into a grimace, pus-like disgust oozing from his pores for the crest of the name Feltsman was a yellow star.                    

 

“I am not—” she begins to say but does not finish her thought.  This was not her grief, but she does think that names have impacts.

                 

She quickly gets into the car but continues to stare at the old man with her ever-sharpening features and she clutches the newborn. How beautiful he is, with his eyes so very curious.  She smiles at him and then looks at her husband as they drive. They are a happy family.

                 

They get many visitors those first few weeks.  Yakov thinks it will overwhelm the baby and Lilia just did not expect the company.  The media got wind of it and they do what they can to talk to the prima ballerina they prized so much.  Yakov does what he can to keep them away but that does not stop rumors from spreading.

*** 

One magazine said that Lilia resented her child for stopping her at the peak of her career.  She only throws the rag into the fire when she reads it.  She misses dance and they both know this.  Yakov sees her dance to try to sooth Yitschak to sleep, rising on her toes and spinning gently beside the crib, one bare foot pulled up to her leg, but at this point, after nearly a year of not dancing and many sleepless nights with the infant, she falls asleep before he does, stretched out on their bed with their son finally beginning to drift off, himself, on her chest.  Yakov falls asleep soon after.

 

When she returns to the ballet, she gets an idea.  She does not return to the ballet to dance, rather to visit, and this time she brings both Yakov and Yitschak, for the sake of making a statement.  Helene has been demoted back to ensemble and Lilia cannot help but smirk when she sees her in the crowd.  The other dancers gather around the trio, fawning over the baby who is too tired and too confused, but ultimately also too young, to understand what is going on.  The couple kisses and the dancers coo.  Lilia is no longer a threat.  She can tell they think she has become soft and again the overwhelming sensation of maternity courses through her system.  They treat her like a mother now, sentimental and warm.  Lilia is not even the eldest there.  But they watch rehearsal and the nostalgia is overwhelming.  Their moves are all wrong and their thoughts and heart are not with the music. Whoever is training them this season has no idea what to do and she decides to do what she can to start training dancers, herself.

 

She finds they are happy as the thought occurs to her and she laughs.

 


End file.
